


perrita

by lizamarri



Series: perrita [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Asexual Pidge | Katie Holt, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gay Keith (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, M/M, a gay mess, a nice mess, but a mess all the same, i promise this isn't angsty tho, it's the opposite, just keith getting to fucking RELAX once in his goddamn life my poor gay son, keith finally dealing with all his fUCKING TRAUMA JESUS CHRIST, voltron gets a dog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:47:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28054887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizamarri/pseuds/lizamarri
Summary: There are things Keith's been holding off his whole life. Ever since he was eight, there’s always been something to suppress. Ever since his father was a hero and he was left with nothing but a gravestone and an urge to fly anything he could get his hands on.But nothing stays bottled up forever.And sometimes, all you need is something cuddly to let it all out.aka, Voltron gets a dog
Relationships: Allura & Coran & Hunk & Keith & Lance & Pidge | Katie Holt & Shiro, Keith & Lance (Voltron), Keith & Shiro (Voltron), Keith & Voltron Paladins, Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Series: perrita [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2125836
Comments: 16
Kudos: 125





	perrita

**Author's Note:**

> KEITH IS MY SON AND I LOVE HIM SO HERE'S HIM BEING FUCKING HAPPY FOR ONCE
> 
> this is probs gonna have a pt two but i have no idea when. 
> 
> hope you enjoy, fellow klancers!

“Pidge.”

“...yes?”

“What the fuck is this?”

Pidge wheels around in her spinny chair, her face the picture of innocence. “Why Keith,” she says sweetly, “that’s a dog.”

“I know what it is,” he grumbles. “I just want to know what it’s doing _here._ In the castle. Where serious things happen. AKA, _who brought a fucking dog in here.”_

Pidge shrugs. “Ask Lance.” She spins around and starts tapping away again at something on the holo computer. 

“Oh my god,” Keith groans to himself. 

The small puppy runs in circles around his legs, so fast he’s afraid to move. Eventually, he steps out, and slams the door shut behind him. 

The puppy slips out right as he closes the door, little black tail a blur with how fast it’s wagging. It trots around his legs, licking the ankle of his boot. 

“What am I going to do with you,” he mutters. The dog tilts its head and pants. It’s tongue is a bright cornflower blue. 

Keith sighs. He leans down and picks up the animal gingerly, hands wrapping around its ribs, and holds it at an arm’s length. “We’re taking you to Lance,” he tells it, all the while feeling majestically stupid. “And he’s going to get rid of you.”

It licks the air like it’s trying to get to Keith’s face. He scowls. 

When he reaches Lance’s door, he knocks on it with his foot. “Lance!” he yells. “Lance!”

The door flies open. Lance glares at him with headphones on his head. He pulls them off one-handed, and they hang around his neck. “What is it?”

Keith holds out the puppy. It squirms in his arms, and he wrinkles his nose. “Your dog won’t leave me alone.”

Lance’s mouth falls open. He looks affronted, like someone… well, like someone kicked a puppy in front of him. 

He would never kick the thing, though, no matter how annoying it is. He isn’t like _that._

Lance snatches the dog out of his arms, cradling it like a baby. “How _dare_ you?” he says, scritching behind the thing’s ears. “Nessie is a blessing upon this earth and how _dare_ you treat her like such filth!”

It licks Lance across the cheek, and he grins. “See? She likes me?”

Keith frowns. “Nessie?”

“...Maybe I’m still working on the name.”

“You named her for the Loch Ness Monster,” Keith says dryly. 

Lance shrugs. The puppy bobs with him. “So? Nessie’s adorable!”

“If you’re going to pick a cryptid, at least pick a good one.” He closes the door and walks away. 

“Keith. Keith! What’s a good cryptid?”

Keith smiles to himself and walks away. 

* * *

There’s something wet on his face. 

For a second he freaks out, tied between the fear that someone pranked him and the fear that there’s _actually_ something attacking him. 

Either way, he yanks his knife out from underneath his pillow and holds it to the threat. 

The threat… with a wagging black tail and a panting blue tongue.

Keith groans, and throws the knife to the side. It clatters to the floor, and he lets his head fall back onto the pillow, too tired to do anything about it. “Please get off,” he groans. “...Now.”

The puppy does nothing. 

Keith lifts his head a little, indigo eyes fixed on blue puppy ones. He lifts his hand up slowly, and snaps his fingers. “...Now.”

The puppy bounds forward and licks his face again. 

“Ughhhhhhhhh,” Keith groans. His clock reads at least two vargas before it’s an acceptable time to wake, so he gives up and tugs the blankets over him and the puppy. It snuggles into his chest, booping its cold nose against the bottom of his chin and wriggling into his crossed arms.

The heat feels… kind of nice, if he has to admit. He hasn’t had this type of contact with anyone since he was eight years old. 

He falls asleep with little black paws hanging onto his wrists.

* * *

Keith wakes to his alarm. 

He shuts it off instinctively, one hand smacking the snooze button. Usually, he’s up and swinging out of his bed before he even hits snooze, but there’s a warm weight pressing into his chest and he doesn’t want to move.

...Wait. 

He looks down, and the puppy moves in its sleep a little bit. It’s… it’s adorable. 

Look, he may be some Pidge-dubbed emo/loner, but he isn’t a _sociopath._ He’s not going to move a puppy when they’re sleeping. He won’t do it. He won’t condemn himself to hell like that. 

So… he can’t move. 

To be honest, it isn’t that bad. The puppy is warm and cuddly, he wakes up extraordinarily early compared to the others. (Lance gets up at least three vargas after he does.)

He wriggles deeper into his beautifully warm sheets. Seriously, what even is this thing? It’s like a portable heater.

The puppy snuffles in its sleep, and Keith has to physically stop himself from making an ‘aw’ noise. He may not be… completely against the thing, but he’s not melting _this_ fast. No. Nuh-uh. He has a reputation to uphold, thank you very much.

Keith sighs and falls asleep. 

* * *

See, the thing about space. 

Well. The thing about space is technically, there’s no _day._ There’s no night, either. There’s just a giant mass of dark matter and distant planets and stars. Circadian rhythm? Who’s she?

This means it’s horribly, horribly easy to sleep in. 

And for the first time ever… he does. 

It’s Shiro who knocks on his door. “Keith?” he asks. “Keith, are you still in here?”

“Mmphhh,” he groans back. 

“You’re… still sleeping? Are you ok?”

Keith immediately rockets up. The puppy in his arms squirms and opens its mouth in a tiny, adorable yawn. 

He stumbles out of bed and into his clothes as fast as he can.While stumbling into his pants, he catches his reflection in the mirror and holy fucking _quiznack,_ he’s got a serious case of bedhead. Like, worst bed head ever. Better than Pidge’s record setting one after she slept in her helmet on accident.

He drags his fingers through his hair hastily and manages to pull it into an acceptably messy ponytail. He shoves his bangs away from his face and yanks open the door.

Shiro looks down at him, eyebrows pursed.. His mouth is slightly open in confusion. “Uh...”

“I’m fine!” Keith cries. “I just… slept in.” There’s a little pattering of paws behind him, and he prays to every quiznacking deity in the universe that the thing doesn’t show itself. 

“I heard your alarm go off,” Shiro continues. “Are you sure you’re feeling- awwwww!”

Shiro bends down and scoops the puppy into his arms. It scrambles up the metal one and tries to climb onto the top of his head like a koala.

Keith bites his cheek to hold back a smile. “You look like an idiot.”

“So this is why you slept late!” Shiro cries, standing awkwardly to try and keep it from falling. “Aww, that’s adorable. Why did you just tell me you were having a slumber party with her?”

“I wasn’t having a slumber party with it,” Keith growls. “It just… found me.”

“It?” Shiro asks. “Keith. You do not call something this cute ‘it’.”

“I can do whatever I want, I’m a fucking paladin,” he mumbles under his breath. Despite getting shocked awake, he still _feels_ like he’s asleep.

“Ok,” Shiro says over his shoulder. The puppy leaps off his head and latches it’s paws onto Keith’s shoulder, skidding down before Keith catches it out of pity. “But just so you know, it’s breakfast in a few ticks.”

Jesus. Usually, by the time breakfast comes around, he’s burnt through at least three training sequences and a couple laps around the deck. 

It’s odd. He’s gotten used to the headaches that come with only sleeping six hours a night. 

Now, he has a bedhead barely tamed by a ponytail, a dog that apparently likes him, and he’s late. 

Halfway to the dining hall, he realizes he forgot shoes. He’s walking around a war ship in his quiznacking _socks._

Whatever. Too late to turn back now. 

He opens the doors to the dining hall slowly, slipping in like it’ll distract from the fact that he ridiculously overslept. 

But… no one’s here. 

He waits a few ticks, but the doors don’t open and no one falls through the vents. (That would only be Pidge, who is he kidding.) 

Someone trots through the doors. He doesn’t have to look, the tell-tale patter of little claws and soft paws gives it away immediately. The puppy looks at him, cocks its head, and trots to him like a fucking cartoon. 

It sniffs at his ankles then looks up, absolutely adorable with a wagging tail and a panting tongue. 

Cornflower blue eyes blink once, twice, and it cocks it’s head the other way. 

“Oh my god,” Keith groans. “Fine.” He bends down and picks it up, forcing himself to tuck it into his chest. Unlike Shiro, it doesn’t climb over his body like a jungle gym, but merely snuggles into his ribs like last night. 

He can’t fit on one of the chairs while keeping it in arms, so he has no choice but to sit on the table. In his socks. Criss-cross fucking applesauce. 

He feels like he’s six again. 

He eats a small plate of goo absentmindedly with his left hand, the right one scritching mindlessly underneath the puppy’s ears. Whenever he stops for longer than a few ticks, the thing turns around and licks his wrist wildly. Every time, he fails at forcing down a smile and goes back to scratching. His hand cramps a few times, but he ignores it. The price you pay, really.

When the doors open, he doesn’t even register it at first. It’s not until someone rather jarringly yells, “What the _shit?”_

Keith looks up, his eyes big and wide. The puppy turns her head towards the newcomers and tilts it to the side, tongue panting. It turns in a little circle around itself and licks up the side of Keith’s cheek like saying _look what I got!!!!_

He can’t help but smile, biting his lip to control it, and the puppy turns back around and sits decidedly. 

Five open mouths face him when he looks up again. Coran’s twirling his mustache, which he didn’t even know was a thing that people… did.

“What?” he asks, frowning. He bites his lower lip, and looks down at the furry creature in his lap. It stands up and props his front paws up on Keith’s thigh to reach his wrist. Instead of licking, this time it actually grabs the joint where his thumb meets his hand with its teeth and drags his hand back over. 

It’s really freaking adorable. 

“I know, I know,” he mutters, resuming his scratches behind its ears. 

He looks up again. Pidge looks a cross between skeptic and impressed, Hunk’s actually going to cry, Shiro’s pretty much the same, and Allura’s smiling that little nostalgic smile she gets whenever she tells a story or sees something particularly cute. 

“Oh my god, that is so unfair,” Lance groans. “She goes to you? The resident loner?” He smacks his thigh. “So _that’s_ why she left my room last night! Keith, you seduced my dog!”

The puppy in his lap turns around and growls at Lance, its tail shaking like a little furry rattle. It backs up on its haunches.

Lance’s eyes bug, and he whispers, “Oh my god, he turned her into a murder dog.”

Keith taps it on the back and it whips around, face switching from a (still adorable) growl to an (even more) adorable happy face. 

“She won’t stop following me,” he grumbles to the others. He turns to the puppy. “Hey. No growling.” 

It whines, and tilts its head again. Honestly, he’s almost worried it’ll break something if it keeps doing that. It sticks its tongue out of the side of his mouth, cocking its head the other way like a pendulum.

“No,” Keith repeats, stronger this time. It whines in defeat, shoving its head into his rips. Its little glossy tail is down between its legs as it… well, aggressively snuggles him. 

“Oh my god that’s adorable,” Shiro stage whispers as the puppy crawls back into his lap. 

Keith glares, though it’s a little ruined by the dog snuggling back into his lap. “I could kill you from right here, Takashi.”

This leads to a discussion about how the hell did everyone start calling him Shiro when, apparently, his real name is _Takashi,_ (Keith spent a solid week trying to figure out why Adam called Shiro a full separate name until he just plain asked, but he’s not going to tell them that.)

This then leads to a discussion about real names, in which he learns that apparently out of all of them, Allura is the only one who goes by her full name. Even though he’s never been called anything other than Keith his whole life, his birth certificate does _technically_ say Akira. 

Pidge is obvious, no one calls her Katie anymore since… well, since Kerberos. Hunk, again obvious, and Lance’s real name is apparently Leandro.

Coran then launches into a speech about his own name. Keith doesn’t catch most of the middle, uh, names, (yeah, plural) so in the end all he has is Coran Wimbledon Smythe. Apparently, while Coran has a million names, Allura only has one. None of their monarchs have surnames, and then they switch to Lance, which then prompts a fifteen minute discussion of why he has an Irish surname while he appears fully fucking Cuban.

“Somewhere up there in the little twiddly branches of my family tree,” Lance explains, pausing to shove a spoonful of goo in his mouth “is a great great great great many more greats daddy McClain who sailed to Cuba and fell in love with a cute girl and decided to stay there forever. Ever since then, _every_ single of my great great whatever Cuban grandfathers had the last name McClain which they passed onto their wives and kids ‘cause of the sexist pressures of society, which lead to me, a 96% Cuban bitch sporting a white surname.”

“That’s…” Pidge pauses. There’s a fleck of goo in her hair. “Really complicated.”

“I know!” Lance throws his hands up. Everyone decided to follow Keith’s example and sit on the table instead of in the chairs. Coran excused himself a dozen doboshes ago, but Allura’s still there. Every now and then, she looks over to the puppy still nestled in Keith’s lap. 

Once, he thought it was asleep. The moment he stopped petting it, it curved it’s head backwards and bent like a cobra to lick him so ferociously he almost thought the exorcist took over his poor dog. 

...His dog. 

Huh.

**Author's Note:**

> ngl i would die for nessie
> 
> i also based her off of my dog who is literally a giant cuddly fluff. i love her and would take several knives for her dumb, cute face.
> 
> come yell at me on tumblr @all-this-panic-still-no-disco and come to instagram for a trash can of my faves @liza_marri


End file.
